The circus is about to go international, and it will be making a stop in Toronto.

With about a month and a half to go before UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor tries his hand at boxing against Floyd Mayweather, the fight’s promoters announced that the two fighters will be sitting across from one another for a series of press events next week.

Most importantly — for a Canadian audience, at least — they’ll be coming to Toronto for a Wednesday evening event on July 12 at the Budweiser Stage (previously was at Sony Centre but got moved due to high demand).

The other stops on the tour include Los Angeles, Brooklyn and London.

It’s a sign of the times that even on a weekend where two UFC titles are up for grabs and there were fun fight cards slated for both Friday and Saturday, a “press tour” announcement is overshadowing it all.

To be fair, though, next week marks the first time that Mayweather and McGregor are on the same stage, and will surely see tensions rise as they prepare for their Aug. 26 match in Las Vegas.

Both men are notorious trash-talkers, and even the most hardcore boxing fans who are enraged by the idea of a UFC fighter with no boxing experience taking on the most decorated boxer of his era have to admit that the build-up should be fun.

Neither man has ever squared off verbally with an opponent who is as slick with their words as either McGregor or Mayweather.

Both have gotten in opponents’ heads in the past, and they’ll both be bringing their best trash-talk to next week’s events.

Tickets for the Toronto show are sold via Ticketmaster.

CLOSE DECISION

When the final bell rang, Elias Theodorou and Brad Tavares both raised their arms in victory.

Normally, that’s just a little bit of posturing, but in this case both Theodorou, of Toronto, and Tavares had compelling cases for feeling they’d won their fight at the Ultimate Fighter Finale in Las Vegas.

Theodorou had started slowly, but seemed to be strolling through the second round and the early-third, while Tavares was better in the first and then the final two minutes.

In the end, though, the Canadian went home disappointed, as Tavares earned a unanimous decision thanks to those final two minutes when he was in control on the ground and working towards a submission.

DOLLOWAY BACK

Somehow, CB Dolloway had gone more than three years since he last won a fight in the UFC before Friday night.

Dolloway had lost three times in the interim, dropping fights to the likes of Nate Marquardt, Lyoto Machida and current middleweight champion Michael Bisping.

Those aren’t the type of losses that usually get a fighter cut, and Dolloway showed why he still has a job in the UFC by outlasting veteran Ed Herman in a hard-fought three-round decision at the Ultimate Fighter finale in Las Vegas.

Herman isn’t exactly elite competition at this point, but he made Dolloway work for his win, knocking him with a good, clean shot early, before being taken to the ground.

All-round, it was a good win for Dolloway, one of the sport’s good guys, and who had his career nearly derailed in a bizarre elevator accident last year.

IN THE WIN COLUMN

One of the weird quirks of Angela Hill’s career has been that every time she fought outside of the UFC, she looked great, but anytime she stepped into the octagon in MMA’s biggest promotion, she just couldn’t seem to get her hand raised.

It always sort of felt like the UFC matchmakers might be to blame for that, as they consistently fed her competition that was just slightly better than what she probably should have been facing.

That included the likes of Jessica Andrade in Hill’s last fight, and Andrade’s next fight game against straw-weight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Hill’s good, but nobody thinks she’s that good.

The matchmakers finally gave Hill a lesser opponent on Friday night, and she delivered, picking up her first UFC win since 2014 by outlasting Ashley Yoder for a unanimous decision.

Hill hadn’t been winless in that time, to be clear, but she was cut by the UFC and then went on a four-fight win streak in the Invicta FC promotion, before returning for the Andrade fight earlier this year.

Now, though, one of the UFC’s most dynamic personalities finally got the UFC win she’s been craving.

AROUND THE OCTAGON

So Tecia Torres fought, and it didn’t go to the judges’ scorecards. Incredible! Torres is a fantastic fighter and the No. 5-ranked strawweight in the world, but she’s earned a reputation for not being able to finish opponents. She submitted Juliana Lima on Friday night, though, which should help her start shed that label … I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t give Gray Maynard a chance against Teruto Ishihara, but the 38-year-old veteran showed he’s still got some fight in him yet, doing exactly what he needed to do to take out the suddenly-stalling Japanese fighter.